INO Seminar

Seminar by Hamid Mazloomi Khamseh, ENSGSI-INPL and CERAM Business School

How Do Exploration and Diversity Interact for Interfirm Knowledge Transfer?

Abstract

The ever-changing business environment has made knowledge a strategic resource for today's competing firms. Interfirm alliances are recognized as one of the important means of knowledge acquisitions and learning. Relying on knowledge based view; this study tests the effects of three concepts as the prerequisites for interfirm learning: Intent to learn from partner, Existence of novelty to be learnt and the Ability to learn. The paper defines the presence of intent to learn from the partner by the level of exploration, the existence of new knowledge to be learnt by the level of partner diversity and addresses the ability to learn by the interactive effect of the exploration and partner diversity. The hypotheses are tested based on a survey over a sample of 114 French companies controlling for other determinants of knowledge transfer between partners (e.g. ambiguity of partner's knowledge, knowledge protection and trust). Using Tobit regression models, the findings show that the intent to learn is positively related with the interfirm knowledge transfer. Moreover, an inverted U-shape relationship is observed between partner diversity and the effectiveness of interfirm knowledge transfer. Finally, the negative moderating effect of partner diversity on the relation of exploration and knowledge transfer highlights the importance of the ability to learn. In the accordance with the concept of relative absorptive capacity we find that similarity of partners has positive effect on the interfirm learning by facilitating exploration.